Marcella

"Oh no!" she said quickly, "I should like the walk."

He hesitated; then, with a flush which altered his usually quiet, self-contained expression, he moved on beside her.

"Allow me to go with you then. You are sure to find fresh loads to bring back. If it"s like our harvest festival, the things keep dropping in all day."

Marcella"s eyes were still on the ground.

"I thought you were on your way to shoot, Mr. Raeburn?"

"So I was, but there is no hurry; if I can be useful. Both the birds and the keeper can wait."

"Where are you going?"

"To some outlying fields of ours on the Windmill Hill. There is a tenant there who wants to see me. He is a prosy person with a host of grievances. I took my gun as a possible means of escape from him."

"Windmill Hill? I know the name. Oh! I remember: it was there--my father has just been telling me--that your father and he shot the pair of kestrels, when they were boys together."

Her tone was quite light, but somehow it had an accent, an emphasis, which made Aldous Raeburn supremely uncomfortable. In his disquiet, he thought of various things to say; but he was not ready, nor naturally effusive; the turn of them did not please him; and he remained silent.

Meantime Marcella"s heart was beating fast. She was meditating a _coup_.

"Mr. Raeburn!"

"Yes!"

"Will you think me a very extraordinary person if I ask you a question?

Your father and mine were great friends, weren"t they, as boys?--your family and mine were friends, altogether?"

"I believe so--I have always heard so," said her companion, flushing still redder.

"You knew Uncle Robert--Lord Maxwell did?"

"Yes--as much as anybody knew him--but--"

"Oh, I know: he shut himself up and hated his neighbours. Still you knew him, and papa and your father were boys together. Well then, if you won"t mind telling me--I know it"s bold to ask, but I have reasons--why does Lord Maxwell write to papa in the third person, and why has your aunt, Miss Raeburn, never found time in all these weeks to call on mamma?"

She turned and faced him, her splendid eyes one challenge. The glow and fire of the whole gesture--the daring of it, and yet the suggestion of womanish weakness in the hand which trembled against her dress and in the twitching lip--if it had been fine acting, it could not have been more complete. And, in a sense, acting there was in it. Marcella"s emotions were real, but her mind seldom deserted her. One half of her was impulsive and pa.s.sionate; the other half looked on and put in finishing touches.

Acting or no, the surprise of her outburst swept the man beside her off his feet. He found himself floundering in a sea of excuses--not for his relations, but for himself. He ought never to have intruded; it was odious, unpardonable; he had no business whatever to put himself in her way! Would she please understand that it was an accident? It should not happen again. He quite understood that she could not regard him with friendliness. And so on. He had never so lost his self-possession.

Meanwhile Marcella"s brows contracted. She took his excuses as a fresh offence.

"You mean, I suppose, that I have no right to ask such questions!" she cried; "that I am not behaving like a lady--as one of your relations would? Well, I dare say! I was not brought up like that. I was not brought up at all; I have had to make myself. So you must avoid me if you like. Of course you will. But I resolved there--in the church--that I would make just one effort, before everything crystallises, to break through. If we must live on here hating our neighbours and being cut by them, I thought I would just ask you why, first. There is no one else to ask. Hardly anybody has called, except the Hardens, and a few new people that don"t matter. And _I_ have nothing to be ashamed of," said the girl pa.s.sionately, "nor has mamma. Papa, I suppose, did some bad things long ago. I have never known--I don"t know now--what they were. But I should like to understand. Is everybody going to cut us because of that?"

With a great effort Aldous Raeburn pulled himself together, certain fine instincts both of race and conduct coming to his help. He met her excited look by one which had both dignity and friendliness.

"I will tell you what I can, Miss Boyce. If you ask me, it is right I should. You must forgive me if I say anything that hurts you. I will try not--I will try not!" he repeated earnestly. "In the first place, I know hardly anything in detail. I do not remember that I have ever wished to know. But I gather that some years ago--when I was still a lad--something in Mr. Boyce"s life--some financial matters, I believe--during the time that he was member of Parliament, made a scandal, and especially among his family and old friends. It was the effect upon his old father, I think, who, as you know, died soon afterwards--"

Marcella started.

"I didn"t know," she said quickly.

Aldous Raeburn"s distress grew.

"I really oughtn"t to speak of these things," he said, "for I don"t know them accurately. But I want to answer what you said--I do indeed. It was that, I think, chiefly. Everybody here respected and loved your grandfather--my grandfather did--and there was great feeling for him--"

"I see! I see!" said Marcella, her chest heaving; "and against papa."

She walked on quickly, hardly seeing where she was going, her eyes dim with tears. There was a wretched pause. Then Aldous Raeburn broke out--

"But after all it is very long ago. And there may have been some harsh judgment. My grandfather may have been misinformed as to some of the facts. And I--"

He hesitated, struck with the awkwardness of what he was going to say.

But Marcella understood him.

"And you will try and make him alter his mind?" she said, not ungratefully, but still with a touch of sarcasm in her tone. "No, Mr.

Raeburn, I don"t think that will succeed."

They walked on in silence for a little while. At last he said, turning upon her a face in which she could not but see the true feeling of a just and kindly man--

"I meant that if my grandfather could be led to express himself in a way which Mr. Boyce could accept, even if there were no great friendship as there used to be, there might be something better than this--this, which--which--is so painful. And any way, Miss Boyce, whatever happens, will you let me say this once, that there is no word, no feeling in this neighbourhood--how could there be?--towards you and your mother, but one of respect and admiration? Do believe that, even if you feel that you can never be friendly towards me and mine again--or forget the things I have said!"

"Respect and admiration!" said Marcella, wondering, and still scornful.

"Pity, perhaps. There might be that. But any way mamma goes with papa.

She always has done. She always will. So shall I, of course. But I am sorry--_horribly_ sore and sorry! I was so delighted to come here. I have been very little at home, and understood hardly anything about this worry--not how serious it was, nor what it meant. Oh! I _am_ sorry--there was so much I wanted to do here--if anybody could only understand what it means to me to come to this place!"

They had reached the brow of a little rising ground. Just below them, beyond a stubble field in which there were a few bent forms of gleaners, lay the small scattered Tillage, hardly seen amid its trees, the curls of its blue smoke ascending steadily on this calm September morning against a great belt of distant beechwood which begirt the hamlet and the common along which it lay. The stubble field was a feast of shade and tint, of apricots and golds shot with the subtlest purples and browns; the flame of the wild-cherry leaf and the deeper crimson of the haws made every hedge a wonder; the apples gleamed in the cottage garden; and a cloudless sun poured down on field and hedge, and on the half-hidden medley of tiled roofs, sharp gables, and jutting dormers which made the village.

Instinctively both stopped. Marcella locked her hands behind her in a gesture familiar to her in moments of excitement; the light wind blew back her dress in soft, eddying folds; for the moment, in her tall grace, she had the air of some young Victory poised upon a height, till you looked at her face, which was, indeed, not exultant at all, but tragic, extravagantly tragic, as Aldous Raeburn, in his English reserve, would perhaps have thought in the case of any woman with tamer eyes and a less winning mouth.

"I don"t want to talk about myself," she began. "But you know, Mr.

Raeburn--you must know--what a state of things there is here--you know what a _disgrace_ that village is. Oh! one reads books, but I never thought people could actually _live_ like that--here in the wide country, with room for all. It makes me lie awake at night. We are not rich--we are very poor--the house is all out of repair, and the estate, as of course you know, is in a wretched condition. But when I see these cottages, and the water, and the children, I ask what right we have to anything we get. I had some friends in London who were Socialists, and I followed and agreed with them, but here one _sees_! Yes, indeed!--it _is_ too great a risk to let the individual alone when all these lives depend upon him. Uncle Robert was an eccentric and a miser; and look at the death-rate of the village--look at the children; you can see how it has crushed the Hardens already. No, we have no right to it!--it ought to be taken from us; some day it will be taken from us!"

Aldous Raeburn smiled, and was himself again. A woman"s speculations were easier to deal with than a woman"s distress.

"It is not so hopeless as that, I think," he said kindly. "The Mellor cottages are in a bad state certainly. But you have no idea how soon a little energy and money and thought sets things to rights."

"But we have no money!" cried Marcella. "And if he is miserable here, my father will have no energy to do anything. He will not care what happens. He will defy everybody, and just spend what he has on himself.

And it will make me wretched--_wretched_. Look at that cottage to the right, Mr. Raeburn. It is Jim Hurd"s--a man who works mainly on the Church Farm, when he is in work. But he is deformed, and not so strong as others. The farmers too seem to be cutting down labour everywhere--of course I don"t understand--I am so new to it. Hurd and his family had an _awful_ winter, last winter--hardly kept body and soul together. And now he is out of work already--the man at the Church Farm turned him off directly after harvest. He sees no prospect of getting work by the winter. He spends his days tramping to look for it; but nothing turns up. Last winter they parted with all they could sell. This winter it must be the workhouse! It"s _heart-breaking_. And he has a mind; he can _feel_! I lend him the Labour paper I take in, and get him to talk. He has more education than most, and oh! the _bitterness_ at the bottom of him. But not against persons--individuals. It is like a sort of blind patience when you come to that--they make excuses even for Uncle Robert, to whom they have paid rent all these years for a cottage which is a crime--yes, a _crime_! The woman must have been such a pretty creature--and refined too. She is consumptive, of course--what else could you expect with that cottage and that food? So is the eldest boy--a little white atomy! And the other children. Talk of London--I never saw such sickly objects as there are in this village. Twelve shillings a week, and work about half the year! Oh! they _ought_ to hate us!--I try to make them," cried Marcella, her eyes gleaming. "They ought to hate all of us landowners, and the whole wicked system. It keeps them from the land which they ought to be sharing with us; it makes one man master, instead of all men brothers. And who is fit to be master? Which of us? Everybody is so ready to take the charge of other people"s lives, and then look at the result!"

"Well, the result, even in rural England, is not always so bad," said Aldous Raeburn, smiling a little, but more coldly. Marcella, glancing at him, understood in a moment that she had roused a certain family and cla.s.s pride in him--a pride which was not going to a.s.sert itself, but none the less implied the sudden opening of a gulf between herself and him. In an instant her quick imagination realised herself as the daughter and niece of two discredited members of a great cla.s.s. When she attacked the cla.s.s, or the system, the man beside her--any man in similar circ.u.mstances--must naturally think: "Ah, well, poor girl--d.i.c.k Boyce"s daughter--what can you expect?" Whereas--Aldous Raeburn!--she thought of the dignity of the Maxwell name, of the width of the Maxwell possessions, balanced only by the high reputation of the family for honourable, just and Christian living, whether as amongst themselves or towards their neighbours and dependents. A shiver of pa.s.sionate vanity, wrath, and longing pa.s.sed through her as her tall frame stiffened.

"There are model squires, of course," she said slowly, striving at least for a personal dignity which should match his. "There are plenty of landowners who do their duty as they understand it--no one denies that.

But that does not affect the system; the grandson of the best man may be the worst, but his one-man power remains the same. No! the time has come for a wider basis. Paternal government and charity were very well in their way--democratic self-government will manage to do without them!"

She flung him a gay, quivering, defiant look. It delighted her to pit these wide and threatening generalisations against the Maxwell power--to show the heir of it that she at least--father or no father--was no hereditary subject of his, and bound to no blind admiration of the Maxwell methods and position.

Aldous Raeburn took her onslaught very calmly, smiling frankly back at her indeed all the time. Miss Boyce"s opinions could hardly matter to him intellectually, whatever charm and stimulus he might find in her talk. This subject of the duties, rights, and prospects of his cla.s.s went, as it happened, very deep with him--too deep for chance discussion. What she said, if he ever stopped to think of it in itself, seemed to him a compound of elements derived partly from her personal history, partly from the random opinions that young people of a generous type pick up from newspapers and magazines. She had touched his family pride for an instant; but only for an instant. What he was abidingly conscious of, was of a beautiful wild creature struggling with difficulties in which he was somehow himself concerned, and out of which, in some way or other, he was becoming more and more determined--absurdly determined--to help her.